CHASING WHALES

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 228, 19 May 1932, Page 2

CHASING WHALES

AN ANRGY MONSTER SCIENTIFIC AIBS, BUT STILL WORK ONLY FOR HARDY MEN. . THE MODERN VIKINGS. Whale-chasihg is mueh more scientific than it was in the days of that schoolboy classic, "Peter the Whaler." The harpoon now may be 1601b in weight, with five 12in barbs at its head; it is fired from a gun, and, screwed into the tip, there is a 101b bomb which explodes in the vitals of the whale. But it is still a job for only the hardiest of men who can withstand Aretic weather, gruelling work, and continual menace from pack-ice. 1 "Bla-a-a-st, bla-ast blue whale to •starboard!" Such is the cry of the look-out man in the crow's nest of the whale-chaser, eutting through icy water s. A gong clangs. The chase i£ on. A giant, ninety to ninety-five feet long, rising thirty yards from the ship, eniits a jet of spray and takes in a deep breath of the chill air. The noise resenibles cast-irpn throated hounds attempting to bark with halfsubmerged jaws. Every member of the crew is alert. The helmsman manoeuvres" now to port; now to starboard. The harpooner slues his gun and waits until the whale's dorsal fin is for an instant exposed. Then there is a flash c flames, a deafening report, the ship vibrates, and the bow rears, the whale line dances and curves, running out with fantastie leaping, and the harpoon hurtles towards the whale, ripping through his blubber and shattering his heart. Immediately he Sounds. A few seconds later a muffled explosion is heard. • The water is patched with crimson. The monster is then drawn in amidships and lanced with a long-handled knife; a nozzle is inserted into the opening and air is pumped into it so that the corpse will not sink while being towed to the parent ship, where . it is hanled up a slipway and dis- ' seeted for its preeious blubber. Modern Vikings. A parent ship of 17,000 tons, the oil-burner Southern Princess, and five 100-ton chasers form the Antarctie expedition described by Mr. Henry Fergusson, a young Australian, in "Harpoon." The crews are mostly Norwegian, beeause, for sheer hardihood, they are a race unsurpassed; "with brute strength and prodigious energy they hurl themselves at a task and accomplish it . . . the obstacle must give way." And, they do it not for romanee or adventure, but for money. They wear fur caps tied under the chin, sea-boots and dogs spiked with two-indi steel nails to grip the icy surfaee, an abundance of woollen clothing under Iceland guernseys. The rigging sparkles with icicles; snow dances on the blood-soaked deck. Their hands get so cold and sore that they cannot shut them. They move in a sea of ice "snow-capped and windcarved in all manner of fantastie shap.es." There are jobs below-decks which would break the hearts of all but Viking men — for example, when the crude-oil tanks have to he cleaned out for the reeeption of the valuabft whale oil. — "Cooped in the gaseous fume-laden tanks, we sweltered in the brutal heat from the rows of steam pipes on which we stood. . . Soon our singlets and trousers, soaking with sweat, clung to our bodies. Halfbaked in these veritable infernoes, almost blinded by the irritating fumes, and on the verge of choking from the vile gas, we crouched on our haunches on the hot pipes. With hands burnt and scorched we scooped the slushy oil and sediment." The Force of Ice. Then there is the ordeal of smashing one's way through the pack-ice. Rivets snap from the strain; icy water trickles through; the ice infiicts "like a torpedo" a succession of hammer-blow shocks; a "crashing, tearing, rumbling avalanche of sound, and a three-cornered stanchion, eight feet high, snapped as if it were plaster instead of steel." The chief engineer and a fireman escaped by seconds when the ice rams one of the chasers and sinks it: — From plates twisted and buckled, and a gash three feet long and about six inches wide, water tumbled into the engine-room and stokehold. The next instant the two men were pitched headlottg on the oily floor as the chaser lurched to ner doom. Escaping steam hissed like the whistling of.a legion of ghosts. In a wild effort to .clamber to their feet the men clawed at likely supports; for the floor had become a wall rwhich they had to scale to reach he steel ladder which was fast bcccmihg horizontal. An Angry Whale. One of the crew relates how, on a former expedition, a whale sank s a 50-ton chaser. Twice the harpions got home, but each time the line snapped. The enraged whale swerved sudd'enly and charged the ship; fiye men were drowned when, tangled and twisted, it sank. There are times when the pack closes in and the brave little ships have to fight th'eir way through blizzards if their crews ars not to spend black winter nights in polar tents and ultimately risk dying of starvatibn and exposure. The thrust-up ice begins to look like the wigwams of Indian .braves. Olose by the fo'c'sle scuttle hatch the peak of a hummock has a sinister appearance, resembling a grinning skull. How terrible it would be to be surrounded by peaked ice all looking as if capped with grinning skuils! A Woman Who Sought Adventure. A life for only the hardiest men, in truth! And yet a woman once shared it as a stowaway on the whaler Christianna, when she set out from Sandefjord, in Norway. For eighty hours she remained hidden, without food or light, in a rat-infested stokehold in which cordite was stored. When, tearful and pleading, she was discovered, the eaptain ordered her to help in the galley. The crew grew so sentimental about her — even serenading her with their accordions — that he decided to land her at South Georgia and commit her to the care of the wife of a doctor there. But she was determined to be the first woman to gaze upon the frozfen wastes of Antarctica from a whaler. So she stow-

ed away again, this time in a life boat on one of the accompanying chasers, and stayed there until he could no longer stand the tossing and pitching. The eaptain was so annoyed that he refused to take her aboard the parent ship a second time, so she stayed on the chaser, where — with bearded and high sea-booted men lurching about, and execrable fare, it is small wonder that her romantic il•lusions were speedily shattered.